


The Mermaid and the Fisherman

by DictionaryWrites, Johannes_Evans



Series: Magic Beholden [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Belly Kink, Cultural Differences, Eggpreg, M/M, Merpeople, Mildly Dubious Consent, Monsters, Oviposition, Sea Monsters, Size Difference, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johannes_Evans/pseuds/Johannes_Evans
Summary: A young man fleeing home has taken up residence in an old fishing cabin on the west coast of Scotland. He is observed, very closely, by a mermaid from beyond the maerl beds nearby.
Relationships: 19th Century Exiled Trans Man/Curious Mermaid
Series: Magic Beholden [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844758
Comments: 12
Kudos: 259





	The Mermaid and the Fisherman

He walked north until the blisters on his feet stopped bleeding.

His back hurt too, of course, from the weight of his satchel, but the welts on the backs of his thighs were healed, at least, by the time he came to a stop. Standing on the craggy shoreline, he took a moment to catch his breath, staring out at the grey sea, the grey sky, the charcoal-coloured rock that stretched out toward it.

In the distance, there was a loud moan of wind as it heightened in speed again, and the rain began to fall down hard on his head – in the weeks he had been walking, he had been lucky to avoid the rain entirely.

Perhaps it was a sign.

Probably not.

Pulling his cap down further forward, to keep the rain from getting in his eyes, leaving it pouring off the brim in streams, he looked up the coastline, to where the forest came down and stopped where the rock started.

Nestled inline with the edge of the trees was a wood cabin. Its roof was half-missing, and its door was hanging off its hinges: when he stepped inside, wood pigeons were startled from their nests in the ramshackle rafters and fled, leaving him alone.

He looked between the empty cupboards, the crumbling chimney and the long-cold firepit beneath it, the empty pallet where a bed had once been, its straw long-since taken by the birds.

He nodded to himself.

This would do.

*** * ***

Gwyrdd was often interested in the surfacers. There weren’t many of them at the place closest to where the surface jutted out near where the village was, but if you moved north or south, where the water had a different edge, sometimes there were whole settlements of them close to the shore, and occasionally, they even made little pieces of surface and brought it out over the water.

They did it to fish, mostly, but sometimes, they would skim over the water’s surface and go far, far away. They were strange creatures, but they had to do it that way: if they didn’t, they would die.

They died very easily.

He had noticed the new surfacer when the tide was high, and he had risen from the water to collect some of the strange coral fruits that grew in the forest nearby. He had found very few of them to gather in his basket, with far more of the black, tightly-packed pockets of sweet juice missing than would normally be eaten by the sky-fish that swam even without water, and there were only fruits that were not yet full-grown, that were shades of green, or red.

This had baffled him, until he had observed that the home that had once belonged to the old surfacer, many decades ago, had been somewhat refurbished, and black steam rose in thick furls away from the vent it had in its roof.

He saw the surfacer as he came back to the water, lingering as he did at its edge, craning to watch it. The surfacer was young, he thought, because its skin still fit it very tightly – perhaps it was because so many of them were very thin, though he had observed it in properly sized surfacers also, that their skin came to no longer fit them as they grew older, and formed odd folds and wrinkles in their faces.

This one had no such folds: it looked – from what Gwyrdd could tell – youthful, but it was large enough, he thought, to be an adult.

As was typical for its species, it had swaddled itself in very finely woven netting, no doubt for the purpose of keeping itself warm, or perhaps in order to protect its vulnerable skin from damage.

Gwyrdd lingered.

It looked interesting.

He’d always found surfacers interesting, what with the strange-looking texture of their skin – some of them had soft-looking spines that sprouted right from it in thatches – and their bright, vulnerable-looking eyes. When they were alive, apparently they were very warm to the touch, though he’d never touched one.

He’d like to.

They were so _small_ , so wide-eyed, and they looked impossibly fragile – and if they were also _warm_?

As he watched, the surfacer sat down on the bench it had made of the surface-coral, and it brought to its mouth a small, curved branch with a bowl at its end. With a flicker of the captured sun that surfacers used, it lit the bowl’s opening, and brought it to its mouth, blowing out grey steam afterward.

Gwyrdd dove back beneath the surface.

*** * ***

He sold his father’s pocket watch and his mother’s jewellery, and bought nails and a hammer, blankets, and a cheap rowboat. There had been a few old hooks and a few lengths of line left in the base of the wardrobe, and underneath the tacklebox had been some folded netting. He found more of it along the coastline, where the cork floats had let it come ashore.

His nets, for that mix of scavenging, were in several colours of weave, and were mixed in weight, but that didn’t much matter – he’d learned to make his own cork out of driftwood.

It was easier, catching fish – he already knew how to do it. He’d made a few half-hearted attempts at catching the rabbits that he could see some mornings at the edge of the wood, but they moved fast, and they weren’t as stupid as he’d thought.

And deer—

Honestly, they intimidated him a bit, and he wouldn’t know how he’d even begin to butcher one. Fish were easy.

Winter was on the horizon. He’d arrived in early September, and it was midway through October now: the nights were colder than he was used to, and there was more of a bite in the wind, though he hoped the salt would keep the water from freezing nearby surfaces even if snow came come December.

He patched the rowboat up before he took her out.

Along the coast, there were thick maerl beds, and he’d found a few places where mussels grew, too. There were mushrooms in the forest, although he only knew one or two of them were safely edible, and didn’t want to risk the rest – berries were easier. In the new year, he’d start to grow some carrots, maybe some potatoes.

He was thinking about this when he saw the shape in the water.

It was a dark shape underneath the choppy grey surface, too solid to be a school of fish, but not a singular shape he recognised. It raised its head above the water, and he stared down at it, thoughtful.

He looked at his pipe, frowning, and then looked back at the thing in the water.

It was still there.

It was fairly large, larger than he was himself, and it had thick swathes of hair that didn’t really look like hair, and looked far more like growths of kelp, hanging around its head. Its eyes were very small, a clouded blue colour, but its face wasn’t unlike that of a human’s: although it had no nostrils, it had an outcrop of flesh that looked not unlike a nose, and between its parted lips, he could see two rows of fine, sharp teeth. As it looked up at him, he watched as its tongue darted out from its mouth. It was black, narrow, and it moved like a snake’s tongue, tasting the air.

The tongue was very long.

He waited for it to say something, or perhaps to hiss, or otherwise growl. Its eyes were fixed in its head, and didn’t roll like his own eyes, and it moved its head as it looked at him, evidently getting the measure of him, somehow.

In the end, it said nothing, sinking back beneath the surface of the water.

Thoughtful, he put his pipe back in his mouth, and returned his attention to his fishing line.

You didn’t see that every day.

*** * ***

The surfacer, twice a week, took its piece of surface onto the water, and fished with a line. It used surface worms as bait, or pieces of strangely fragrant fish, and also set traps where the stream gave way to the sea, or used nets to take catch from schools of fish near enough to the surface of the water.

It never took all that much, Gwyrdd noticed – the surfacer would fill its basket with what it wanted, and then it would toss the rest of the fish back, and it would toss smaller fish back regardless. Gwyrdd would catch them if he was hungry, swiping them from as they rushed past, and eat them himself.

It was a strange practice, Gwyrdd thought, as if the smaller ones weren’t good enough for it, but surfacer customs were difficult to grasp from a distance.

It cut off pieces of the hard coral that made up what passed for a forest of kelp on the surface, and it had made a pile of them beside its home. It used them for fuel, many of them, but it had also cut them into smaller poles, and seemed to be using them to build with, although Gwyrdd did not know what it was building.

It had not, when it had seen Gwyrdd, shouted at him, or made a bit of noise. Now and then, he suspected it spied Gwyrdd watching him, but it never made a scene about it: sometimes, it glanced at him, but then went about its activity.

Gwyrdd had been under the impression that the surfacers were naturally social beings – the old surfacer had lived alone, but even it had regularly made journeys into the villages, would disappear for weeks on end. This surfacer was always there.

It always wore its strange swaddling, which was tailored to its body, fastened in various places, and layered so as to be most effective at… whatever its intended effect was.

Some settlements, he knew, had more interaction with surfacers, and knew more about them, but when he had asked the village elder, Annwn, he had said that they knew very little about them, that if he wanted to learn more about them, he would have to commune with the People, and while the People weren’t surfacers like the surfacers were, they still were… _of_ the surface.

So he watched the surfacer himself, and studied its movements.

It ate a varied diet – it ate different weeds and grasses from the sea with confidence, and it ate mussels, ate different fishes, ate the coral-fruit Gwyrdd had noticed before. It even ate, he noted with interest, the surface corals that were soft and spongey to the touch, and so unlike the rest.

Watching the surfacer go about its daily life had become his new hobby, in truth.

He always volunteered to gather the coral-fruits from the surface, or to harvest mussels from the area in which the surfacer’s cabin was, and even when he had no labour to pursue, he would linger in the water, watching. There was a peace in watching it do things, such as work, or feed itself, or even just sit back with its bowled stick between its lips, sending smoke toward the sky.

He itched to know what its skin looked like under its swaddles.

Surfacers had live young instead of laying eggs, he knew. They were less like Gwyrdd’s people and more like seals, and he presumed they mated in the same way – seals had something like an ovipositor, but they didn’t lay eggs with it, they merely sprayed their seminal fluid, and it was the other seal that both produced and carried the eggs as they grew into live young. This meant, he supposed, that they had a channel made to take an ovipositor – did this surfacer?

Gwyrdd wondered what it would be like to fuck it. He hadn’t even heard it speak so far – in receipt of his ovipositor, he imagined it would make quite a lot of noise.

It was smaller than he was – it would be a tight fit. Perhaps it would scream.

He could feel himself everting at the very thought, and he swam closer to the water’s edge, pulling himself up to the rock, his elbows resting on the stone, his gaze forward. The air was quite cool and light on his skin, and he opened his mouth to breathe like that instead of through his gills.

The surfacer glanced up from where it was sat by its captured sun, and it looked at Gwyrdd with its strange, big eyes, its lips parted. The spines on the top of its head, Gwyrdd noticed, were not hidden beneath a piece of tightly woven netting like they usually were, and they were now on display: they were very short and were curled in their shape, and he wondered what they would feel like under his hands.

“Are you real?” asked the surfacer.

“Yes,” said Gwyrdd. His voice sounded strange above water, what with how harshly sound carried on the bare air, but if the surfacer thought it odd, nothing showed in its face. “Why would you think otherwise?”

The surfacer shrugged its narrow shoulders, making its swaddle shift. “Thought I might be imagining you.”

Gwyrdd watched it, and slowly, he rose from the water, moving slowly forward cross the ground, his hands and feet flat against the rock as he crawled forward, closer. The captured sun’s light was uncomfortably bright, but its heat was not unpleasant on his skin, albeit stronger than he was used to, and the surfacer watched him cautiously.

He knew from the People that a surfacer’s name bound them as much as anyone’s name bound them, and he thought to ask for the surfacer’s, that he might bind it himself.

“Will you give me your name?” Gwyrdd asked.

“Can’t,” it said.

“Oh,” said Gwyrdd. Evidently, it knew to avoid such a trick question as that. “Will you tell it to me, then?”

“Can’t,” it said again.

Gwyrdd pulled a face, staring at the surfacer and its blank expression. “Why not?” he asked.

“I don’t have one,” it said.

“Oh,” Gwyrdd said, thoughtful. “Hm. I thought surfacers had names.”

“I suppose we do,” it said. “Most of the time. I don’t, though.”

“Someone stole it? Or did you give it away?”

“I threw it away,” it said. “Like so much rubbish.”

“There is a lot of power in a name,” Gwyrdd advised it seriously.

“And a lot of bondage, too,” said the surfacer grimly. This was more wisdom than Gwyrdd would have expected from the likes of its kind, and for a moment, he was quiet, watching it in interest. “You speak Cymraeg well.”

“Cymraeg?” Gwyrdd repeated.

“They,” the surfacer said, gesturing with one hand behind it, waving toward the distance, “speak their language. Gaelic. A few of them speak enough Saesneg as I can talk to them, but none of them have Cymraeg. You do.”

Gwyrdd had never spoken to the old surfacer when it had been alive, and it had never occurred to him that it should speak a different language than he did himself, though he supposed it must be true that many of the surfacers had different languages than real people.

“Why have you come here?” Gwyrdd asked. “You surfacers live in settlements. Are you widowed?”

“No.”

“Disgraced?”

The surfacer thought for a minute, considering the question, and then it shifted its jaw, and met his gaze. “No,” it said.

“The winter will be very cold,” Gwyrdd said. “Perhaps the ice will kill you.”

The surfacer looked at him thoughtfully, its head tilting to one side. “Would you like that?” it asked.

“It would not impact me one way or the other,” said Gwyrdd, “though I think it sad when fragile things die.”

The surfacer made a funny sound, and it took Gwyrdd a moment to understand that it was laughing. Its lips parted, showing its white, flat teeth, its bizarre, pink tongue, and when its head tipped back, he could see the column of its brown neck where its waddle no longer hid it from view, a column of strange, smooth flesh without ridge or marking.

“God gives me a mermaid,” the surfacer said, “and it professes it weeps for flowers in winter. What cosmic joke is that?”

Gwyrdd frowned. “What is a flower?” he asked.

The surfacer smiled, its lips curving into a crescent as it turned its attention back to its captured sun, and Gwyrdd looked with interest at the metal disc it had resting over the sun’s heat. The metal looked hot to the touch, and in it was a fillet of fish, sizzling and spitting in its juices. Beside the fish were pieces of kelp and seaweed, also cooking in the mix.

“What is this?” Gwyrdd asked, pointing to a brown piece of mallow in the medley.

“Bitta mushroom,” said the surfacer.

“Mushroom,” Gwyrdd repeated.

“Eat it,” said the surfacer. “It’s good.”

Gwyrdd took the piece of mushroom between his fingers, although it was quite hot to the touch, hotter even than the flesh of a seal when you ate from its core, and he made a face, but as the surfacer watched him, he brought the mushroom to his mouth, and put it upon his tongue, drawing it inside. It was a strange taste, oddly mild and lacking in salt, with unfamiliar notes he did not well know, and he swallowed it down.

“The temperature is strange,” Gwyrdd said, feeling the hot mushroom slide down his throat and into his belly, feeling the trail of heat it left. “Why must you heat your food in this way?”

“Get sick if you eat things raw,” said the surfacer. “And it tastes better. You can eat some more, if you like.”

He shook his head, and when the surfacer looked at it, seeming offended, he went on. “You should eat the rest,” Gwyrdd advised. “You are very small.”

The surfacer looked at him, its eyes moving strangely – it could move its eyes without moving the rest of its head, and the result was strange and unsettling, its eyes rolling in their place as it examined his body, looking him up and down. Its gaze lingered on the place between his legs, where his ovipositor was sheathed, before it examined his hands, his feet. It was difficult to tell what the shape of its feet were, what with the hard swaddling it wore on them, but it had very bizarre hands: the fingers were thin and spindly, each one singular as a branch of coral, with no webbing to connect them.

It was no wonder surfacers were such poor swimmers.

“Thought your gills didn’t work on land,” said the surfacer, and it brought its metal bowl from over the flame, setting it down in front of its folded legs, and Gwyrdd watched in interest as it took a small, metal tool, and began to use it to pick up morsels from its metal bowl, bringing them to its mouth. Once it had them, it made strange motions with its jaw, grinding each morsel between its amusing, flat teeth.

“I can take some life-air through my mouth,” Gwyrdd said. “It is a half-breath – I can sit here, speak with you, but I could not live out my whole day, nor could I walk very fast, as you surfacers do. Do you have a penis?”

The surfacer had small pockets of skin that regularly hid its eyes from view, little films – eyelids, again, like a seal. It blinked them as it looked at Gwyrdd, still doing its amusing jaw motions.

It swallowed, the food making its throat shift as it took its meal down its gullet, and then it said, “No.”

“You people do not lay eggs,” Gwyrdd said knowledgably.

“Nope,” the surfacer agreed. It did not compliment Gwyrdd on his wisdom, which Gwyrdd resented.

“You give birth to live young.”

“Ideally.”

“Ideally?”

“Sometimes, people give birth, and the “young” is dead.”

“Strange,” Gwyrdd said. “Its siblings would not eat the dead flesh in the womb?”

The surfacer raised the little patches of spines over its eye sockets – were they like whiskers? – and then said, at length, “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

“Wasteful.”

“I suppose.”

“Are you fertile?”

“Not so far,” the surfacer said, but it didn’t seem upset about it.

“Is that why you are in exile?”

“I’m not in exile.”

“Hm,” said Gwyrdd, and watched the surfacer eat.

It ate two thirds of the meal it had made for itself, and then made to cover the plate with a cloth, but Gwyrdd leaned forward. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, if I don’t cover it, rats, bugs, will try to get at it.”

“It will be harder still for them to “get at it” if you finish the meal you have made.”

“I’m full,” the surfacer said.

“This is why are you are so very small,” Gwyrdd said, and reached over, removing the cloth, and pushing the metal bowl back toward it. “Eat.”

He thought that the surfacer would protest, but then it ceded to a mind more wise than its own, and he watched with interest as it continued to eat. He moved closer, crawling forward – it was more comfortable now, for its captured sun was beginning to dim in its intensity, and when it reached out to touch the surfacer, it let him.

He slid his palm, which despite its time out of the water was wet with its own mucus, over the surface of its arm, squeezing slightly, and it felt the texture of its flesh: the surfacer’s flesh was smooth, and its spines – or whiskers – were quite soft to the touch, and very thin. It was _warm_ under his hand, and he let out the smallest growl of irritation where it came to the swaddle it wore, guarding its flesh from further touch.

“Why do you gather yourself in this?” he asked, tugging at a piece of it.

“Clothes?” the surfacer asked. “Because I’d freeze without it. We don’t just walk around naked like you do.”

“Naked,” Gwyrdd repeated.

“Naked,” the surfacer agreed, and gestured to his body. “Uncovered.”

With the hand not holding its tool for eating with, it reached out and slid its own fingers over Gwyrdd’s chest, tracing the ridges upon his breast and pressing on the spongey material of his central bladder, which helped him stay upright when he was very deep underwater.

It put down its tool, and Gwyrdd frowned, because there was still a handful of fish left in its metal bowl, and several pieces of _mushrooms_ also. Picking up the tool himself, he scooped up the largest of the fish pieces and brought it to the surfacer’s mouth.

“I can’t eat anymore,” the surfacer said: its mouth was open, so he deposited the fish inside. It struggled for a moment, tried to spit the fish out, and he put his hand over its mouth and forced it to retain the fish inside. As he held its gaze, not looking away, it did that motion of its jaw again – like this, he could feel the grind of its teeth, and he quickly put his hand on its throat so that when it swallowed, he could feel that, too.

“More,” he said.

“You first,” said the surfacer: they were tangled together, one of his knees between its thighs, touching its swaddle, and it scooped up a piece of fish in its fingers, bringing it up to Gwyrdd’s own mouth. His tongue darted out, taking the fish from its fingers and dragging it down his gullet: the surfacer shivered.

He picked up the tool again.

“This normal for fish people?” asked the surfacer, looking at the tool piled high with mushroom and fish.

He deposited the morsel in its mouth.

Once the meal was finished, he allowed the surfacer to put the plate aside, and the surfacer reached out, its hands touching his body. They were very warm to the touch, the flesh strangely soft, and he remained still as it traced over the lines of his ridges, the shape of his body, pressing on the points where his body released mucus to keep his flesh lubricated.

“You’re cold,” it said.

“You aren’t,” he said. “Are you warmer beneath your “clothes”?”

He watched, fascinated, as the surfacer leaned back slightly, pulling up layers of the swaddle, and he barely got a glimpse of its flesh, paler than that on its face, before it dragged his hand against it. He hissed at the heat of its vulnerable belly, so much warmer than the flesh of its arm, and he tried to move his hand higher, to its chest, but it grabbed his wrist and kept him in place.

“No, stay there,” it ordered him crisply. “My stomach hurts – that feels good.”

“Why does your stomach hurt?”

“Because you made me eat too much, you stupid fish.”

Gwyrdd released a hissed sigh of distaste. “I am not a fish.”

“Circles,” the surfacer instructed, and it allowed him to move his wrist in small circles against the flesh of its belly. Beneath his hand, he could feel the shift of its innards, and the regular, steady beat of its strange heart. Its blood must be very hot, and when it pressed down where the flesh of its belly did not yield, it grunted handsomely, gritting together its teeth, its eyes tightening shut. Would it make a sound like that if he fucked it?

Leaning in closer, brushing its head spines with his lip, he tasted its scent: the surfacer smelled less like fish and salt, and more like the forest behind it, and the burnt remainders of the captured sun.

He found in the surfacer’s belly a dip, and thinking he had found the entrance of its brood pouch, he pressed into it, but found only more tightly coiled skin, and it grunted, pushing his hand away.

“That’s my navel,” it said. “We’re connected to our mothers by a cord when we’re born, before it is cut – that is where mine used to be.”

“Just like seals,” Gwyrdd said thoughtfully, and tried to press down lower, to feel where the surfacer’s belly met its hips, and the surfacer grabbed him by the wrist again, tugging.

“Let me put out the fire,” it said, and he was going to ask, but then it saw him stamping out its captured sun with its pan.

“Why?” Gwyrdd said. “Won’t you be cold?”

“I’ll light another one inside,” it said.

“Inside?” he repeated.

*** * ***

“Do you have a name?” he asked as it watched him light the fire inside. It watched him curiously, the fish-man, the mermaid, whatever you wanted to call it: it was strange, but it seemed quite happy to touch him, and it had been months since he’d spent time with anybody, let alone since he’d touched anybody.

He hadn’t dared take up with any of the men in the village here – as it stood, they took that he was a young man at face value, with how short his hair was shorn, and he knew that might change if he undressed for any of them, if they decided he was a woman, then, and thought he should be made a wife.

The mermaid didn’t seem like it knew much about anything like that. It had forcefed him his own dinner, and now it watched him with its strange, static eyes, the door closed behind it, shutting them in the warmth of the cabin. He had put his coat and a spare blanket before the fire, to keep from getting its mucus in his bed.

“Gwyrdd,” it said.

“ _Gwyrdd_?” he repeated, staring at it. “What sort of name is that?”

“It’s a colour,” it said. “The colour of—”

“I know what colour it is,” he interrupted, and closed the fire’s grate. “Do _you_ have a penis?”

“No,” Gwyrdd said, and as he began to shuck off his shawl, putting it aside, and then pull off his jumper, it watched him with fascination. Its gaze was unblinking, of course – the mermaid had no eyelids – as it watched him unlace his shirt, but when he began to shrug out of his chemise, it stepped forward, putting its cool, slimy hands on his bare skin.

He let it, shivering as he unbuttoned his trousers and let them drop.

“I’m a man,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“No,” it said, its slimy hands fondling his tits, and he shuddered at the electric thrill the touch sent down his spine, as Gwyrdd’s rough, slick fingers dragged over his nipples, tugged at them, evidently interested in them.

“Christ,” he said, but he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. “Well, us— what did you call us, wynebaes? Surface-people? We have two sorts of people: men, and women. Men are he, women are she. You understand?”

“You are he?”

“Yes— _fuck_.”

Gwyrdd looked down at him quizzically – it was easily a head and shoulders taller than him, and twice as wide – and continued the methodical roll of one of his nipples between its fingers, the sensation oddly electric. “Fuck?” it repeated hopefully.

He was already wet from having wrestled with it outside – and what _that_ said about him, he really didn’t know – and his clit jumped whenever he clenched on empty air. He liked sex, really – liked it more, now that he was fairly certain he couldn’t get pregnant, which was more than a relief—

“If you don’t— _ah_ , Gwyrdd, lie down here with me – if you don’t have a penis, how do you want to do this?”

Gwyrdd either didn’t hear him, or the swipe of its tongue was an answer: it slid over his breast and curled around one of his nipples, leaving a tingling heat in its wake even though the actual tongue was cool to the touch, and he hissed out a sound as he fell back on the blanket, spreading his legs apart.

Gwyrdd looked—

Well.

Certainly, you could call its body roughly human-shaped. It had two arms and two legs, although its body was a different shape – its shoulders were broad, its waist more narrow, and the taper only continued to its feet, which he’d thought looked strangely narrow until he’d noticed the fins folded against the side of its legs, which looked as though they spread out when it was swimming in the water.

It had huge swathes of what looked like kelp around its head, almost like hair, and despite the way its neck seemed to blend into its head rather than being clearly separated, its face was loosely similar to a human one. Its body was segmented, with clear gills slitting the sides of its chest, and its torso was separated into several segments. If he pressed underneath them, he touched tenderer flesh, but there were vents that let forth mucus that seemed to cover the mermaid from head to toe, keeping its body slick to the touch.

He had thought it had nothing between its legs, but now, the flesh there had seemed to change and tighten on each side, showing an entrance from which a shaft was now emerging. It did not look like a penis, really – like the rest of the mermaid, it was a dark sea green, and it was very thick at its base, with a taper to its more narrow tip. More slick gushed from its tip, and he reached out and touched the mermaid’s cock, squeezed it in his hand and was surprised by how unyielding it was – it didn’t feel, like the rest of the mermaid’s body, as though it were covered with very smooth scales, but it felt more rubbery, smoother.

Gwyrdd groaned low in its throat, a hissed sound that made him shiver, and he stroked his hand along the thick shaft, his lips parting. When he tasted it, leaning to touch his tongue against it, he was surprised by the taste – it was an earthier taste than he expected, not as salty.

It reminded him of scallops.

“Get on your back,” he said, and Gwyrdd looked at him, but then obeyed, falling onto its shoulders. He straddled the mermaid, feeling its skin under his hands, and the mermaid reached out and stroked its fingers through the slick shining on his partner’s thighs.

“You produce your own mucus,” it said approvingly.

“Let’s not call it that,” he said, and lined the mermaid’s cock up with his cunt. It felt beyond strange, what with how cool and smooth the flesh was, but with its tapered end it slid into him so easily that he moaned, and he watched the look on Gwyrdd’s face, the way its mouth opened, the way its kelp-covered head hit back against the blankets, its webbed hands grasping at his hips.

“Such _heat_ ,” it said, looking at the few inches of its shaft that hadn’t slid into him, and before he could stop it, it gripped his waist and dragged him further down.

“Wait, wait,” he hissed at the tight pinch inside him, smacking the mermaid in the chest to stop it, and it stared up at him, evidently baffled. “That _hurts_ , just— relax a second.”

“I don’t mean to hurt you,” it said, and he grunted, feeling— feeling very _hot_ , actually, and not just because the body beneath him was so much cooler than his own. There was a strange, exciting thrill running through his veins, making him feel like he was lit up from the inside, regardless of the fire beside them, and his skin was tingling, felt— felt so _relaxed_ … He felt awake, but his limps felt heavier, harder to control, and he softly groaned as he rolled his hips down against the mermaid’s ridiculously large cock, feeling the wonderful heat inside him, feel the strange contradiction between the mermaid’s cock and his own inner walls…

“These are nipples?” it asked, reaching for his tits again, and he whimpered, feeling his eyes roll back as his head tipped toward the ceiling, its strange fingers squeezing his tits, its thumbs dragging over each nub. That wonderful, electric looseness was sinking right into him, spreading outward, as though he’d been drinking.

He liked it.

“Yeah,” he said. He was squeezing himself around the mermaid’s cock as he rolled his hips down against it, never managing to bring it wholly inside himself – it was too long, really, but he wanted to get the rest of it into him, wanted it…

“Your people can lactate,” Gwyrdd said. “Do it for me, now.” As if to punctuate its demand, it took hold of each of his nipples and pulled, and he yelped, his orgasm washing over him suddenly, a release of tension he’d barely noticed was building up, he felt so impossibly relaxed. The strength of it was enough to make him dizzy, his hands falling against Gwyrdd’s chest as he clenched around him, and he was aware of the humiliating noises he was making, keening like a cat in heat.

“I can’t,” he managed to say breathlessly, “I can’t just do that on command.”

“Oh,” Gwyrdd said, disappointed, and it began to thrust its hips up and against him, making him moan lowly. “Your brood pouch—”

“My cunt,” he corrected it, but it made no objection, and nodded its head, repeating the word obediently.

“It is very hot around me,” it said, “and not so dry as the rest of you. This is good.”

“Thanks,” he said, breathless, dizzy. “Glad you approve.”

He widened his thighs slightly, trying to take it deeper – it thrust up against him, and he grunted. The pain, the tightness, from before, was no longer really a factor – all he could feel was hot, loose waves of pleasure, swaying slightly in his place, and then, it was as though something released inside him, and Gwyrdd slid all the way inside him.

It released a low, satisfied hiss, and he groaned at the feeling of delightful fullness, feeling as though the mermaid had filled him to the brim. He could feel the cock inside him stiffen, going more rigid, and it made him feel as though he were impaled, until he felt the base of the cock thicken.

“Ah,” he groaned. “Ah, fuck, what— You have a dog cock?”

“I don’t know what a dog is,” said Gwyrdd.

“Your cock is getting— _mmm_ , bigger.”

“No,” said Gwyrdd. “That is an egg.”

“An… egg.” He stared down at Gwyrdd, and immediately tried, despite the loose slackness of his limbs, to pull himself up and free, but Gwyrdd grabbed hold of him more tightly, and some of the strange fins that had been moulded tight to its thighs grabbed for his instead, and kept them locked together. “Ah, wait, wait, wait, you can’t— _fuck_ —”

He could feel it. He was completely trapped in place, couldn’t even shift his knee, and when he pushed and grabbed at the mermaid’s body with his hands the mermaid was undeterred, but he could feel the egg, only a little smaller than his fist, as it slid up the length of Gwyrdd’s cock, and then released inside him. It was a strange weight in him, and he hoped the mermaid would let him go, but another egg shifted the mould of his lips around the mermaid’s cock, and he felt his cunt stretched wide as another egg slid inside him – and in quick succession, too more.

“Gwyrdd,” he whimpered, “Gwyrdd, Gwyrdd, let me go—”

“ _No_ ,” Gwyrdd hissed, and began to tongue at his nipples again as the eggs slid into him, each one strangely smooth and heavy, and he could feel them knock against each other, could feel them—

He felt extremely good, full to the brim, impossibly hot and dizzy, and at some point, there was a moment of sheer, white ecstasy, where his brain went utterly blank, and his body went limp.

When he opened his eyes, he was on his back, and Gwyrdd was kneeling over him, examining his belly with interest. It had a slight swell to it, and as he stared, horrified, Gwyrdd pressed on them inside him, and he _hated_ how good it felt, to be so full, to have so much stuffed inside him that you could _see_ it, his belly curving under Gwyrdd’s fingers. Where its fingers stroked, he could feel them under the surface of his flesh, filling him up like hard balls in a bag.

“Are they going to,” he asked, hearing the hitch of fear in his own throat, “are they going to— to hatch? In me?”

“No,” Gwyrdd said, staring down at him, looking amused. “You have no means by which to inseminate them. You will no doubt be able to pass them soon.” It pressed down against the knobbled surface of his belly, and he whined, feeling the eggs shift inside him. “Perhaps you should eat them once you have laid them,” Gwyrdd suggested helpfully. “The nutrients might do you good.”

“You and I, at some point, need to talk a little about dietary differences between our cultures,” he said, slightly dizzily, and touched the surface of his own belly, shivering when he could feel the irregular shapes of the eggs from the outside. “How— how many?”

“In this clutch? Only twenty or thirty at the most,” Gwyrdd said, shrugging. “I recently laid with another, and my clutch is small – ordinarily, it would be closer to one hundred, perhaps two hundred.”

“Two hundred?” he repeated weakly.

His belly was rounded out, more than it would be with a heavy meal, like he’d swallowed a medicine ball – and this was only thirty eggs? What would two hundred be like?

The idea thrilled and horrified him – surely, to be fucked full of that many of Gwyrdd’s eggs would make him split open, and yet at the very thought, he could feel his cunt tighten on air, feel his muscles jump. Gwyrdd could stuff him so full…

Gwyrdd, fascinated, was peering between his legs. “The muscles clench and twitch,” it said thoughtfully. “So pink.” As its fingers played inside him, making him shiver, his hips jumping with the overstimulation despite the weight inside him, it said, “You make good noises when you are fucked. I would like to fuck you properly.”

“This wasn’t properly?”

The mermaid let out a strange, hissed noise – what a chuckle passed for on the sea floor. “You do not want me to fill you with a full clutch? You do not wish for me to bury myself in you? You seemed to like it very much, but this was but a fraction of my potential.” Pressing once more on his belly, it said in a thoughtful, pensive tone, “You are worried you would burst?”

“You aren’t?”

“I would stop before you did,” it said, pressing on its eggs inside him even as it slid four of its other fingers into his cunt, pressing on it and making him whine, his thighs spreading apart. “Probably.”

“Haaa,” he said, and dropped his head onto the floor.

*** * ***

The man was smoking his tobacco pipe when Gwyrdd came up to the cabin.

It was February, and the day had been very cold indeed: the man had avoided as much as possible going outside, and Gwyrdd had offered – feeling quite charitable – to bring him some fish when he came today, so that he didn’t have to go outside so much.

“I hate snow,” the man said, when Gwyrdd put the fish upon the table. He was lying upon his bed, swaddled in all of his clothes at once, but for his boots, which were set aside to dry beside the fire, snow still melting away from the leather.

“Yes,” Gwyrdd said. “I have noticed this about you. You said you would tell me why you are in exile today.”

“I don’t believe I ever used those words,” the man said, arching his eyebrows at Gwyrdd. “Besides, you said you’d say why you bother to spend all this time lingering around me instead of _your_ people. Quid pro quo, Gwyrdd.”

“Quid pro quo,” Gwyrdd repeated curiously, sitting upon the bed, and when the man placed his feet in his lap, Gwyrdd loosely held his ankles.

“Something for something,” the man elucidated. “Fair trade.”

“My people are disinterested in the surface,” Gwyrdd said. “But I like to explore.”

The man looked at him expectantly. When Gwyrdd said nothing, he said, “That’s it?”

“I didn’t say it was a long explanation,” Gwyrdd pointed out, and the man laughed, sucking his pipe into his mouth and then exhaling smoke.

“My people decided I was a woman: I decided I was a man. There were protests to my attempts to live as such – suggestions were made that I should be married, against my will, to bring me in line. So I left.”

Gwyrdd hummed.

“What?” the man asked.

“You implied it _was_ a longer explanation,” he said disapprovingly. “As if it would be interesting.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Gwyrdd looked at the man thoughtfully, squeezing the ankles in his lap. “Did you pick a name?”

The man blew out tobacco smoke. “Nope.”

Gwyrdd wondered if naming a thing would give you the same power over it that taking its name would. “May _I_ pick one for you?”

The man wrinkled his nose. “ _No_.”

Gwyrdd sighed. “Perhaps you might cook the fish I have brought you,” he suggested. “Perhaps with some of your dried mushrooms, and garlic.”

The man raised his eyebrows, giving Gwyrdd a look he had learned to interpret as sardonic. “By any chance, Gwyrdd,” he said, “were you hoping I might make enough for two of us?”

“I brought sufficient fish,” said Gwyrdd.

“You’re a true romantic,” the man muttered, patting Gwyrdd’s knee, and stood to his feet.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Please remember to comment and let me know what you think!
> 
> This is also available as an [eBook on Smashwords](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1042880), and I would be very grateful if you could rate it on [Goodreads!](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55320746-the-mermaid-and-the-fisherman). 
> 
> Please follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/johannesevans) and [Tumblr](http://johannesevans.tumblr.com/) if you like! I'm definitely open to original requests on Tumblr, and feel free to message me about this work or any others!


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